Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to
blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.
Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow
at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com.
These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley
Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take
this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the
photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from
seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close
together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.
The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has
melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as
though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to
describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface.
The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it?
Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.
I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three
months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't
think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes.
Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube.
Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on
a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate,
fake-happy night.
I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.
So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth
White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend
and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a
man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room
right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky.
I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives
with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished
dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else?
What else is there?
Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd
describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and
I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you
have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought
me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill,
I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge
trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about
something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time
rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I
concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world,
I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I
handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.
Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings
on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts.
I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in
star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was
writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.
I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last
chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy
sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides.
If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not
thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl,
had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be
here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know.
I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea,
squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing
is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only
ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for
today. It's begun.
Continue reading at http://read-thaw.blogspot.com.
And I have a copy of Thaw to give away.
Fill in the form to enter!
Deadline is Monday, March 15 |
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